The Life of Sir John Oldcastle

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Title page of the print from 1619. Incorrectly labeled with wrong date of publication and wrong author.

The Life of Sir John Oldcastle also The First Part of the True and Honorable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham is an English Renaissance drama. The play was written by Anthony Munday and Michael Drayton , Robert Wilson and Richard Hathwaye , who wrote it for the Admiral's Men theater company . It was first performed in 1599 and printed in 1600. A second part of the piece seems to have existed, but has been lost. The play, which was very successful in its time, was later published in part as a play by William Shakespeare .

content

The Life of .. takes place shortly after the accession of King Henry V of England . He plans an invasion of France, but first has to consolidate his power at home and fight various threats. The play shows Oldcastle as the forerunner of the Reformation, who was driven into proto-Protestantism by the corruption of the Catholic Church. In doing so, he exposes himself to the wrath of the Bishop of Rochester who persecutes Oldcastle. As Lollarde , Oldcastle is said to be part of the conspiracy against the king. However, Oldcastle not only refuses to attend, but tries to warn King Henry. Heinrich, misled by his advisors, does nothing to save Oldcastle. The play ends with a dramatic escape from the Tower of London and a trial. Oldcastle manages to be acquitted in a secular court and to flee to Wales . The plot continues in the second part of The Life of ... , of which, however, no content has survived.

Emergence

It's about John Oldcastle . This was a friend of Henry V , but also a heretic and leader of the Lollards . The piece was commissioned by the political allies of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham . The real Oldcastle was an ancestor of Cobham. Through a play on a prominent London stage, they tried to increase Cobham's reputation with the Queen and important court officials. It was also a response to Shakespeare's drama Henry IV. In this, the historical Oldcastle appears alienated as the character Falstaff , who is characterized by his addiction to drink and eat. The Life of .. , performed by the rival theater company Lord Chamberlain's Men for Shakespeares, should counter this characterization.

The authors received a payment of 10 pounds on October 16, 1599 and then another ten shillings "as a gift" at the beginning of November of that year. Both the bonus and the print edition, only one year after the piece was written, point to an audience success.

The same records showing payment for "the first part" also show a payment of four pounds for the second part. The theater company also made purchases for the play in March 1600. The Stationers' Company also received an application for the piece to be printed. However, the follow-up piece is lost and nothing has been handed down about its content.

As Shakespeare's play

Over the centuries the play has often been viewed as the work of Shakespeare. This is due to a forgery from 1619, which Shakespeare claims to be the author. The print was part of an unauthorized Shakespeare edition, the so-called False Folio . Due to the widespread use of this print, the author's name Shakespeare was often passed on, so that, for example, the two German Shakespeare translators Ludwig Tieck and August Wilhelm Schlegel viewed the work as a Shakespeare play. While Schlegel considered the play to be one of Shakespeare's best and most mature plays, posterity was less gracious. Most critics since the 19th century describe it as tiresome and exhausting pseudo-Shakespeare, in which not a single line could have been from Shakespeare himself.

literature

  • Larry S. Champion: The Noise of Threatening Drum: Dramatic Strategy and Political Ideology and the English Chronicle Plays , University of Delaware Press, 1990 ISBN 0-87413-387-4 pp. 37-49

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ George K. Hunter: English Drama 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare Oxford University Press, 1997 ISBN 0-19-812213-6 pp. 242-45
  2. ↑ Peter W. Thomson: Shakespeare's Theater Routledge, 1992 ISBN 0-415-05148-7 p. 66
  3. ↑ a b c George K. Hunter: English Drama 1586-1642: The Age of Shakespeare Oxford University Press, 1997 ISBN 0-19-812213-6 p. 240
  4. ↑ Champion p. 38
  5. ↑ Champion p. 37